Thank you for that middle section discussing what other things we must logically be willing to accept along this reasoning. I have often considered the same re:obesity. The obese are endangering our hospitals far more than young, healthy COVID patients.
I also don't doubt for a second that a future battleground within reach because of this debacle is going to be the imposition of plant-based dietary patterns on the general population to help fight climate change. As a diabetic who has been able to bring my A1c under control through eliminating most starch from my diet, this terrifies me. Will I be denied medical care if I'm not on a government-approved diet? Will I even be allowed to pick my own groceries? The logic is the exact same: "put aside your own wellbeing for the greater good, and we will make you do it." "Our patience is wearing thin."
This goes so much deeper than an infectious disease. It's about what actions a stranger is allowed to demand that I take to reduce his level of risk by a marginal (or often totally unquantified) amount. The answer now seems to be "any action at all."
Michael Crichton's short takedown of Eugenics and its many supporters in the US is priceless: "Its supporters included Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. It was approved by Supreme Court justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, who ruled in its favor. The famous names who supported it included Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone; activist Margaret Sanger; botanist Luther Burbank; Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University; the novelist H. G. Wells; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; and hundreds of others. Nobel Prize winners gave support. Research was backed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. The Cold Springs Harbor Institute was built to carry out this research, but important work was also done at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Johns Hopkins. Legislation to address the crisis was passed in states from New York to California..." Full link: https://thedesignspectrum.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/michael-crichton-on-politicized-science-and-the-eugenics-movement/
How far can Biden and his fellow travelers push this before you get a William Wallace-type who is only too willing to reach for violence?
Exactly. Vaccine mandates from the DC fascists represent the resurgence of eugenics as a driver of public policy. Eugenics were a founding principle of Progressivism, which reached its apex in European fascism. And now the wheel turns again.
Biden and team seem *incredibly* confident that their actions will in no way reduce their power going forward. In fact, they seem to double down on almost every contentious issue. Is it blind hubris or do they know something we do not?
Neither hubris nor hidden agendas are driving this. It is the ranting of the teacher who has lost control of the class. Raising their voice more and more, desperately trying to overpower the din. Imagine Joe's relief when the school bell finally rings.
Either they know they have a very narrow window because of midterms, or they know elections don't matter. I hope it's the former but am planning for the latter.
How about another thought experiment. We know from DOJ crime statistics that virtually all armed robbers are men. If you own a liquor store, you can protect yourself nearly 100% from armed robbery simply by refusing to allow men into your establishment. Would that be acceptable? No? Why not? Let’s take it a step further: DOJ stats also tell us that Blacks are statistically more likely to commit armed robbery than whites. Should store owners be allowed to deny Black men entry on that basis? Can we discriminate against a group of people based on what they might do (but almost certainly won’t)? And to those who say, “But robbery is not a communicable disease!” I would answer, “So what?” When you’re being robbed—or shot—will that be any consolation? And if someone wants to argue that you’re less likely to be shot in a holdup than to die of COVID, I would respond that it probably depends on your age and where you live. What we’re talking about is discriminating in order to mitigate risk. Do the ethics of that depend solely on some sort of weighted equation, with the people we’re discriminating against on one side and the level of risk on the other? Against whom, then, are we allowed to discriminate, and why? What level of risk justifies that discrimination? Without specific answers to those questions, the pro-mandate crowd has no ethical argument.
too many hypotheses badly tested made in to fact by the frauds in the us government.
aside from grabbing a power reserved to the states and the people, the fraud in chief is factually wrong. the fascist mandates should go the way of the rent moratorium!!
the vaxx does not prevent transmission, see the larger than last year summer surge in the south with unexplained higher death (in more vaccinated aged frail) that would not appear if the vax worked.
the vax does not alter trajectory of the virus as also seen with lock downs and masks.
for youths (males in the main) between 5 and 20 the risk of myocarditis is greater than the tiny risk of c19.
targeted protection in the frail elderly may be a positive risk reward, for everyone else that is not the case.
huge amount of logic fallacy out of the dictators' panderers
And I can’t even hurl invectives at the breathless MSM stenographers because…….there were no questions. One chocolate chocolate chip cone coming right up!
an interesting aspect is that it's estimated that 70% of blacks and around 50% of Latinos are unvaccinated, so we're also seeing tremendously blatant racism going on. But the government's 'anti-racism' buckdancers are nowhere to be found on this one.
I think this is incredibly thought-provoking and rings an important alarm. Having said that, I’m vaccinated and happy to be so. I have no opinions about the non-vaccinated and am a “to each their own” person. Am I one of those people you feel “submits to moral decay” because I weighed my options and chose to vaccinate?
No you're not, as vaccination makes sense for older people and for those with co-morbidities. It is the vitriol unleashed on those who choose, for whatever reason, not to get vaccinated that is disturbing. The vaccinated and unvaccinated should stand together on the issue of vaccine mandates and vaccine passports. Say NO!
Well, I'm not "older" and I don't have co-morbidities, and yet I'm still happy to be vaccinated. I have no vitriol towards the unvaccinated, but I don't appreciate the fact that ANYONE has made vaccines(or lack thereof) political. It's not about being woke, or "sheeple" or oppressed. It's about personal choice, imo. Almost everyone needs to shut the fuck up and just do what they want in terms of vaccination.
Related thoughts I've been having. All this talk off denying care to the unvaccinated makes me think of the fact that abortion is an almost completely preventable outcome. If I refuse a vaccine and then shouldn't get health care, if you refuse to practice birth control why should you get "healthcare"?
Are any healthy people who have abstained due to doing their research and weighing cost/benefits sick of being compared to smokers and the obese? I do understand the appropriateness of the analogy and it's not a criticism of this great article, but we all see it often. Funny how unvaccinated are blamed for everything while not hearing ONE pro-mandate person with ANY sanctimony towards the people who likely got us into this mess in the first place. Thanks for the many great articles Gato, I've learned a lot.
Fantastic write-up and especially with the thought experiments. It's ironic that my overweight and alcoholic stepmother has been relentlessly hounding my family to get the jab since January. We are the only members of my immediate family on my side, and among the few on my wife's side, who have held off on getting the COVID shots. Our risk/benefit simply doesn't warrant it, yet that is never accepted or respected.
Curious about your part regarding US aid to India and the sterilization requirement. Is there a name for this specific program or somewhere I can learn more about that?
The World Bank gave the Indian government a loan of US $66 million dollars between 1972 and 1980 for sterilization. In fact, Indira Gandhi was pressed by Western democracies to implement a crash sterilization program to control India's population.
The people who need to read this likely won't.
tempted to post this on FB honestly
I just posted on FB and Twitter.
I did!!! Do it.
Why not do it?
However, if one of them does and takes his neurone out of the drawer, it is worth the pain of writing it. Thank El Gato Malo for that.
Thank you for that middle section discussing what other things we must logically be willing to accept along this reasoning. I have often considered the same re:obesity. The obese are endangering our hospitals far more than young, healthy COVID patients.
I also don't doubt for a second that a future battleground within reach because of this debacle is going to be the imposition of plant-based dietary patterns on the general population to help fight climate change. As a diabetic who has been able to bring my A1c under control through eliminating most starch from my diet, this terrifies me. Will I be denied medical care if I'm not on a government-approved diet? Will I even be allowed to pick my own groceries? The logic is the exact same: "put aside your own wellbeing for the greater good, and we will make you do it." "Our patience is wearing thin."
This goes so much deeper than an infectious disease. It's about what actions a stranger is allowed to demand that I take to reduce his level of risk by a marginal (or often totally unquantified) amount. The answer now seems to be "any action at all."
"Our patience is wearing thin." https://twitter.com/DR71117932/status/1436240089185722369
God help us. You got any more of those Twitter videos of youngsters defying mask orders?
I saw a video from Australia discussing a proposal that people eat one bite of meat per day
Yep, this is definitely about a virus.
Michael Crichton's short takedown of Eugenics and its many supporters in the US is priceless: "Its supporters included Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. It was approved by Supreme Court justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, who ruled in its favor. The famous names who supported it included Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone; activist Margaret Sanger; botanist Luther Burbank; Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University; the novelist H. G. Wells; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; and hundreds of others. Nobel Prize winners gave support. Research was backed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. The Cold Springs Harbor Institute was built to carry out this research, but important work was also done at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Johns Hopkins. Legislation to address the crisis was passed in states from New York to California..." Full link: https://thedesignspectrum.wordpress.com/2010/04/27/michael-crichton-on-politicized-science-and-the-eugenics-movement/
How far can Biden and his fellow travelers push this before you get a William Wallace-type who is only too willing to reach for violence?
Exactly. Vaccine mandates from the DC fascists represent the resurgence of eugenics as a driver of public policy. Eugenics were a founding principle of Progressivism, which reached its apex in European fascism. And now the wheel turns again.
My heartbeat, my choice. Period.
Biden and team seem *incredibly* confident that their actions will in no way reduce their power going forward. In fact, they seem to double down on almost every contentious issue. Is it blind hubris or do they know something we do not?
I’m not sure either. It’s very obvious at this point. It’s like a toddler with a massive tantrum. It’s nothing but ideology and zero science.
"Tantrum" was exactly what I thought when I saw Prez Poopy Pant's demands.
pedophile school marm, punishing the kids that do not bend over.....
zero covid is a weapon to destroy the constitution starting with the bill of rights.
Neither hubris nor hidden agendas are driving this. It is the ranting of the teacher who has lost control of the class. Raising their voice more and more, desperately trying to overpower the din. Imagine Joe's relief when the school bell finally rings.
Either they know they have a very narrow window because of midterms, or they know elections don't matter. I hope it's the former but am planning for the latter.
How about another thought experiment. We know from DOJ crime statistics that virtually all armed robbers are men. If you own a liquor store, you can protect yourself nearly 100% from armed robbery simply by refusing to allow men into your establishment. Would that be acceptable? No? Why not? Let’s take it a step further: DOJ stats also tell us that Blacks are statistically more likely to commit armed robbery than whites. Should store owners be allowed to deny Black men entry on that basis? Can we discriminate against a group of people based on what they might do (but almost certainly won’t)? And to those who say, “But robbery is not a communicable disease!” I would answer, “So what?” When you’re being robbed—or shot—will that be any consolation? And if someone wants to argue that you’re less likely to be shot in a holdup than to die of COVID, I would respond that it probably depends on your age and where you live. What we’re talking about is discriminating in order to mitigate risk. Do the ethics of that depend solely on some sort of weighted equation, with the people we’re discriminating against on one side and the level of risk on the other? Against whom, then, are we allowed to discriminate, and why? What level of risk justifies that discrimination? Without specific answers to those questions, the pro-mandate crowd has no ethical argument.
too many hypotheses badly tested made in to fact by the frauds in the us government.
aside from grabbing a power reserved to the states and the people, the fraud in chief is factually wrong. the fascist mandates should go the way of the rent moratorium!!
the vaxx does not prevent transmission, see the larger than last year summer surge in the south with unexplained higher death (in more vaccinated aged frail) that would not appear if the vax worked.
the vax does not alter trajectory of the virus as also seen with lock downs and masks.
for youths (males in the main) between 5 and 20 the risk of myocarditis is greater than the tiny risk of c19.
targeted protection in the frail elderly may be a positive risk reward, for everyone else that is not the case.
huge amount of logic fallacy out of the dictators' panderers
And I can’t even hurl invectives at the breathless MSM stenographers because…….there were no questions. One chocolate chocolate chip cone coming right up!
an interesting aspect is that it's estimated that 70% of blacks and around 50% of Latinos are unvaccinated, so we're also seeing tremendously blatant racism going on. But the government's 'anti-racism' buckdancers are nowhere to be found on this one.
Old Joe seems to be itching to use those F-15s and nuclear weapons.
find a rally and support liberty:
https://lookaheadamerica.org/rally/
My thought exactly
"Pfizernacht"
From Joe Stalin, evil "Father of Nations", to Joe Biden, senile "Grandfather of States".
I think this is incredibly thought-provoking and rings an important alarm. Having said that, I’m vaccinated and happy to be so. I have no opinions about the non-vaccinated and am a “to each their own” person. Am I one of those people you feel “submits to moral decay” because I weighed my options and chose to vaccinate?
No you're not, as vaccination makes sense for older people and for those with co-morbidities. It is the vitriol unleashed on those who choose, for whatever reason, not to get vaccinated that is disturbing. The vaccinated and unvaccinated should stand together on the issue of vaccine mandates and vaccine passports. Say NO!
Well, I'm not "older" and I don't have co-morbidities, and yet I'm still happy to be vaccinated. I have no vitriol towards the unvaccinated, but I don't appreciate the fact that ANYONE has made vaccines(or lack thereof) political. It's not about being woke, or "sheeple" or oppressed. It's about personal choice, imo. Almost everyone needs to shut the fuck up and just do what they want in terms of vaccination.
Agree 100%
Related thoughts I've been having. All this talk off denying care to the unvaccinated makes me think of the fact that abortion is an almost completely preventable outcome. If I refuse a vaccine and then shouldn't get health care, if you refuse to practice birth control why should you get "healthcare"?
Hear, hear! Great essay.
Are any healthy people who have abstained due to doing their research and weighing cost/benefits sick of being compared to smokers and the obese? I do understand the appropriateness of the analogy and it's not a criticism of this great article, but we all see it often. Funny how unvaccinated are blamed for everything while not hearing ONE pro-mandate person with ANY sanctimony towards the people who likely got us into this mess in the first place. Thanks for the many great articles Gato, I've learned a lot.
Fantastic write-up and especially with the thought experiments. It's ironic that my overweight and alcoholic stepmother has been relentlessly hounding my family to get the jab since January. We are the only members of my immediate family on my side, and among the few on my wife's side, who have held off on getting the COVID shots. Our risk/benefit simply doesn't warrant it, yet that is never accepted or respected.
Curious about your part regarding US aid to India and the sterilization requirement. Is there a name for this specific program or somewhere I can learn more about that?
The World Bank gave the Indian government a loan of US $66 million dollars between 1972 and 1980 for sterilization. In fact, Indira Gandhi was pressed by Western democracies to implement a crash sterilization program to control India's population.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/6/5/18629801/emergency-in-india-1975-indira-gandhi-sterilization-ford-foundation
https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/india-the-emergency-and-the-politics-of-mass-sterilization/
https://feminisminindia.com/2020/09/04/history-of-forced-sterilisation-concerns-us-even-today/
they are still at it:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-30040790